The Legions

Its funny that I am writing my own story after all this time, it is a bit like the one entitled 'They Wait', which I edited for my uncle way back in 2011, long before the Coronavirus hit the world and changed things irrevocably.

I am now in a care home, I prefer not to call it an old folks’ home, as I still think of myself as about 50, now some of you probably think of that as being ancient, but the age of 50 was when I still felt to be in the prime of Life. Like my uncle before me, I am an avid fan of the works of M.R. James, and Bram Stoker, I have written vampire and ghost stories since I was a boy.

My body and my health are not in as great shape as they once were, nor am I as steady on the old pins as I once was. But at the age of 81, I am still of sound mind, as lawyers would say, and my memory is still exceptionally good. I still type up my own stories, with the assistance of my daughter Jenny who is my most trenchant critic and able editor since my wife Christine died.

I will not go on about the Coronavirus, as you all know what happened back in the year 2020, and there is no point describing the scenes, as young folk probably will not read this even if I post it up on the social media sites which are still in existence.

Anyway, along with James and Stoker, my other favourite author is Stephen King, remember him?

His books were great, a lot of excellent movies were made of them, in my humble opinion.

I especially liked Salem’s Lot, the one with the guy from Starsky and Hutch, David Soul, remember him?

He was also a singer for a time in the '70s also, and quite successful too.

I was reminiscing with Jenny one day when she came to visit me, about the days when I used to go out drinking, like many of us did in the time before the Coronavirus.

There was an incident that occurred one evening in The Rest, a nice little basement bar in the centre of Aberdeen, my favourite at the time. The Rest had been owned for many years by Jimmy Bruce, who was a great host, and would always be full of stories for us, and he knew how to run a bar which is more than you can say about the conglomerate that has taken it over since his death earlier this year. Jimmy took over the bar in 2022, after all the palaver connected to Coronavirus had blown over and things were back to a semblance of normality. He built the bar back up, reintroduced the music, the bar food, decent beer, and whiskies to the place. I was a real whisky fan in those days and would often have a wee Laphraoig for the road at last orders, my old mate John and I would invariably be the last folk in the place at chucking out time.

What follows is my recollection of this weird happening.

It was Halloween, in the year 2023, the night before my 60th birthday, ok at that age you would have thought that alcohol consumption would be something I had grown out of, but every now and then, I would go out with an old mate, to shoot the breeze, to talk shite and drink beer, as we described it. Christine had her ‘lassies nights' every now and then, so what the hell.

My old pal John and I had been drinking up at the bar for a few hours, and the effects of several pints of Amstel lager interspersed with a couple of whiskies, were beginning to take hold. We had been chatting about old times, long forgotten characters from long forgotten bars, old music and gigs, films, football, you know the ramblings booze fuelled conversations folk had when pubs were a thing.

There was a commotion on the stairs which led down to the bar with two Goth types drunkenly shouting as they stumbled into the place; the girl, the drunker of the two, was being ‘assisted’ down the stairs by a tall gaunt guy who looked about mid-late 20s, the girl, about maybe 19 or 20 had a pale face, and raven black hair, there was blood, or possibly make-up smeared around her mouth. She was babbling incoherently about ‘The Legions of the Undead’ who apparently walked the streets of the city. Given the date it was, she could probably have been forgiven for saying this, as the hordes of young people dressed up in Halloween costumes, various shapes and sizes of ghosts, witches, and vampires, walked the streets.

The phrase regarding the ‘Legions of the Undead’ struck a chord , and evil gothic chord with me, this was a phrase I had used in a story years ago , one I was trying to use to as a metaphor to describe the hordes of drunken young folk who swarmed in the streets of the city in the hours after the nightclubs closed, which I recall was about 3am, maybe I was onto something, they maybe were the actual Legions of the Undead.

I was amazed at my brain could still come up with this, considering my alcohol consumption, John was nearer, and tried to intervene, to maybe get some sense from the two of them.

To me, they looked as if they might be on drugs, but I had seen a lot of people of that appearance in my job in what they called the ‘Justice Sector’ back in pre- Corona times.

It’s Billy, they’ve got Billy, said the goth guy in his Central Belt accent, they tried to catch us, but we wurnae haein’ it.

Jimmy came out from behind the bar to see what was going on, ‘Will I call the cops?’

‘Naw, nae cops, the Legions of the Undead are no scared o’ the cops’, said the goth guy,

John  stepped in, said nothing, and stepped forward, he reached inside his aged leather jacket and produced a silver crucifix; the goth guy shrank back and hissed, an animal sound rather than a human one; John held up the crucifix, and brandished it, as one might a knife, and both goths backed off, and fled from the place.

This was weird, once they had left, John  went up the stairs and out into the street, to see if there was a police presence in the area, two officers outside and did not look to be apprehending anyone. There were a few police cars about in case of imminent disturbance given the large gathering of folk.

There was a seething mass of black clad young folk, who looked like vampires, zombies, or a bit of both, in all shapes and sizes, presumably ‘The Legions ..’ they had spoken of, but if the two inside the bar were for real, what were those who were swarming in Union Street outside the bar, were they really the undead?

I wasn’t going to wait around to find out.

John , like me, had read extensively about vampires since childhood, and was well versed on any preventative measures, it was like wearing masks in the days of Corona, staying safe, and all that. He was also a Christian, so always wore a crucifix, you never knew what to expect in the city these days.

There were so many folk in the street, it brought me in mind of the time when the ‘Gothenburg Greats’ were given the freedom of the city back in the ‘80s after their cup winning victory and we were going to have to make our way across the street, through this lot, to make our way home.

I had been apprehensive of crowds since the time of Corona, and a crowd of potential vampires filled me with horror.

John  and Jimmy whispered to one another round the back of the bar, and it became apparent that we would leave by the back door. He produced two strings of garlic bulbs, which had come from the bar’s kitchen. With the crucifix and garlic we would be safe from any vampire attacks.

So out the back we went, and made good our escape, you could hear the baying masses from round the corner in Union Street, they sounded like a midnight choir of the worst type, Jimmy followed and we piled into his Land Rover and roared off into the night, unaware of the passenger who was lodging on the vehicle’s roof- the goth guy from earlier, the vampire.

We could hear him rabbiting away to himself, and banging the roof, Jimmy swerved the car and he fell off. Jimmy stopped the Landy, and John got out crucifix in hand, held it up and murmured some prayerful incantation in what sounded like Latin. The vampire, shrank back, and John got back into the car , and we travelled safely back home, away from the noise of the city night.

Evidently in folklore Hallowe’en is the night of the year when the boundary between worlds of the Living and the Dead becomes tissue thin, according to one of these old websites from years ago, so maybe that’s what happened that night.

(By Jamie Watson- January 2044)

(Many Thanks to Jenny for her editing skills, my Vampire Archive will be our next collaboration)